Category Archives: science

That’ll be a WMD, weapon of Mosquito Destruction

We’ve assumed we needed to preserve the outdoors for future generations, but we may have been hasty. These are urban sophisticates raised on Xbox and Halo, and angry bears and bolt action rifles may be too tame to sustain their interest for more than seven minutes.

Thanks to science, I’m not even sure I want to go fishing anymore – now that I’m “heeled” with my handheld mosquito laser.

I can remember the first time I saw the cold blue light of the BugZapper, how I howled in glee with every burst of sparks, and the smoky spiral of another victim. It was awful tempting not to drop trousers and moon the bloodsucking squadrons destined for my tender posterior.

Gleeful cries of “you want summa this?” and “come get some” were mingled with the steady “bzzzt”, “bzzzt” of six legged executions. When the power went off – we ran inside and hid, shivering.

Now, we’ve got options:

In experiments, the system could target mosquitoes with a flashlight, and then uses a zoom lens to feed the data to the computer, which fires at the insect. Each time the laser strikes a mosquito, the computer makes a gunshot sound. When the mosquito is hit, it bursts into flame and falls to the ground, and a thin plume of smoke rises.

Call me the Two Gun Kid. I may even return to guiding so’s I can protect wagon trains of tenderfeet from marauding wildlife, “… the Kid’s hammy hands were a blur in the noonday sun, twin Colts roared to life …”

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSIWpFPkYrk[/youtube]

What kid would even consider fishing under the circumstances?

For us cagey older types immersed in the Catch and Release doctrine, will we succumb to setting our phasers to Stun, then winging Mayflies and Caddis to create our own hatch?

Nothing like struggling insects on the surface to trigger feeding trout. What dad would have the backbone not to employ Junior as his wingman?

Technorati Tags: , , , ,

It’s the Secret Spot known only to Google Earth

It’s part and parcel of the angling culture, you call up a buddy to invite him fishing, mention you’re taking someone else and he can’t go. The next thing you hear, ” … whatever you do don’t show him my spot!”

Fishing myth in Japan includes wading into the water where you see a spider web – proof that no one has fished there recently.

It’s the same whether you claw your way up a mountainside, or lose the tailing traffic in a Gordian Knot of dirt roads – you’re busy patting yourself on the back and glance down to see an arrowhead.

Face it, your spot is the best kept secret of a couple hundred fishermen, so when another dog nears your hydrant, there’s no need to show teeth.

 1000 Year old fishing trap

The Mother of all Red Faced-ness is the fellow that thought the above spot was known only to him. With the assistance of Google Earth, scientists have discovered the remnants of a thousand year old fishing trap off the coastline of Wales.

Stones stacked a meter wide with the overall dimension 835 feet, it’s the Stonehenge of Angling – with some fellow on the bank wondering why “his” spot is suddenly so popular.

Organic drift – Under the protective blanket of darkness there’s plenty of activity

Placing drift netsIt doesn’t take a Ph.D to notice it’s easier to fish and wade downstream versus fighting the current or moving upstream. Despite our best efforts, fishing upstream is mostly slack management, the line’s pouring towards you at the speed of the current and you’re doing you’re best to keep some small connection with the fly.

If we struggle with two legs, wouldn’t the same be true of critters with six?

Organic drift is an entomological term describing the tendency of aquatic insects to move downstream. Despite their clinging, crawling, burrowing, behavior – once they’re exposed to the current, they’ve all the same issues we do.

In a widely cited paper, Muller (1954) noted an apparent paradox in the downstream movements of insects, suggesting that with the large numbers drifting downstream, one would expect to see a depopulation of upstream reaches. However, this was never observed. He proposed that upstream flights of adult aquatic insects compensated for the downstream movements of the larval forms, thus resolving the apparent paradox. Waters (1972) proposed the ‘excess production hypothesis’, which
suggested that the production of insect progeny was in excess of the stream’s carrying capacity, compensating for the drift (i.e. these drifting insects are ‘extras’). The true explanation is probably a combination of both colonization hypothesis and the excess production hypothesis, and perhaps some other factors. Researchers continue to look for answers (e.g. Hershey et. al. 1993).

Mother Nature knows humans and insects are prone to fits of laziness, and she’s lent considerable help by making the egg laying phase of aquatic insects the winged form. Prevailing theory suggest that adults have a tendency to fly upstream to ensure eggs and nymphs are redistributed throughout the watershed.

CaddisTo us lay scientists it makes perfect sense, at the point the female daubs the water surface with an egg packet, the current assists the eggs to find purchase downstream of the point of impact.

Proving the theory via research has been largely unsuccessful, but there’s a lot of really useful information that could explain fishing phenomenon we’ve witnessed.

A 1964 study of the river Yarty, a chalkstream near Devon, England, suggests areas of bank and stream erosion releases more insects into the water column than solid substrate.

It was found that the more abundant species of the bottom fauna were likewise the most abundant in the drift, with the exception of some common benthic organisms which live in more sheltered niches or have a strong means of attachment.

Anglers are notoriously poor with numbers, but even we know which insects hatch day after day for the bulk of the season. While the time of emergence will change due to seasonal changes in water temperatures and available light, it’s safe to assume a prowling fish will see more of these abundant bugs than anything else.

This verifies some of our “prospecting” theories, if the Blue Wing Olive is the main course – prospecting through the doldrums with no visible fish activity might be best served with … a Blue Wing Olive imitation.

A 1986 study of the Consumnes River in California suggests long pools absorb drifting insects, and unless the pool itself is replenishing the insects, there’s more to eat at the head of a pool that at its tail.

These findings lead us to hypothesize that long pools act as barriers, not filters, to stream macro-invertebrate drift. The composition of drift leaving the pools in this experiment appeared to be controlled by the composition of the benthic habitat at the tail of the pool and not by the composition of upstream drift entering the pools.

Insect drift may also be one of the causes of the “complex” hatch, as many insects (especially midges) will drift en masse during low light or nightfall. Many reasons account for drift, but the low light surge is thought to be a response to visual predators like trout, where the low light increases the chance of survival.

We’ve seen nymphing trout during the evening hatch numerous times, and while emerging insects are present, it’s possible they’re dining on a smorgasbord rather than the hatching insects we can see.

A study in Otsego County, New York, counted drifting caddis over two evenings and found evidence that moonlight depresses the number of caddis in the water column, and of the 152 caught all were members of Caddis families that construct hard cases.

Makes an interesting twist on the theories espoused by practitioners of Czech nymphing – whose imitations are all worm-outside-the-case style.

MayflyMany of these studies show that Midges and Mayflies comprise the bulk of drifting insects, and Stoneflies and Caddis are relatively small in number. This is consistent with what we know of insect behavior, as both midges and mayflies have entire species that are free swimming.

More drifting insects are available in Spring and Summer, correlating studies suggesting increases in water temperature and volume causes a proportional spike in insect numbers.

The obvious question is, if the insects are in part tumbling about looking for the safety of reattachment – and part intentional drift (overpopulation, predation, hostile environment) – what happens when they have a chance to grab bottom again?

Drifting organisms apparently seek actively their places of protection again in the bottom substrates in response to increasing light intensity in the morning, since drift rates decrease sharply at this time (Waters 1962).

One study suggested that all three (mayflies, caddis, and stoneflies) have a tendency to remain drifting at night even with reattachment possible. The species of mayfly observed only sought attachment during daylight, and the caddis only landed on similar fauna – suggesting there’s some type of preference at work.

Studies on how far insects will drift suggest that 50-60 meters per night is not uncommon. The speed and volume of water movement roughly dictates distance.

As drift levels are not uniform – and one section of creek can contain more bugs mid column than another, it’s left to us lay scientists to correlate all the information into a place to stand shivering.

I’ll take failing sunlight on an eroding bank, upstream of a pool, close to dark, on a waning moon. The rest of the creek we’ll leave to the dry fly fishermen who’re fighting over our scraps in the flat water below.

Blessed Mother of Pasteurization don’t fail me now

It's the water, that's gotta be it With the two articles sandwiched on the news page, I can’t help but wonder was there a connection. Scientists have known about the estrogen effluent story – how the sewage treatment process fails to remove hormones from reclaimed water, and fish downstream of the outflow are mostly feminine.

Now they discovered a wider issue and a second group of chemicals that block male hormones, called “androgens.” We (and the fish) are drinking a couple of fingers of female hormones with our breakfast cereal, and a couple more fingers of something that blocks whatever male hormones remain.

Nice.

… and the article next to it was the resurgence of the gay marriage issue in the legislature. I’m staying clear of the larger issue – but you have to wonder, is water fanning the flame?

It isn’t the first study to suggest that anti-androgens might be contributing to the feminization of fish. But the new research found that there are far more of these chemicals in our lakes and streams than anyone realized. And anti-androgenic chemicals in the water might affect human health as well.

I looked up the articles cited, and really wished I hadn’t …

The most prevalent source of androgen effluent is from cattle feedlots – where cattle are zapped with anabolic steroids to grow fast “double tasty” steaks.

Studies of freshwater mussels, fathead minnows, and sticklebacks, all point to the same conclusion … chemical androgyny. A study conducted in the UK, suggests it’s happening to most wild fish stocks – and nearly all  freshwater sources have tested positive to their presence.

Conclusion: The results provide a strong argument for a multi-causal aetiology of widespread feminisation of wild fish in UK Rivers involving contributions from both steroidal estrogens and xenoestrogens and from other (as yet unknown) contaminants with anti-androgenic properties. They may add further credence to the hypothesis that endocrine disrupting effects seen in wild fish and in humans are caused by similar combinations of endocrine disrupting chemical cocktails.

From a simplistic perspective, I would assume the lower river is influenced by human sources and sewage treatment, and the upper parts of the river are rural and include the rangeland necessary to grow beef.

As I feel obligated to pass on some small trace of good news, females are larger – so female tendencies might add some bulk.

We’re not going to be calling across the creek to our buddy with, “Brown? Rainbow? what was it?” – we’ll know from the shrug it was neither a wild diploid, or a farmed triploid, so it must’ve been another “Shrugploid.”

We’ll be having asterisks aplenty in the record books soon.

Before you reach for the bottled water, consider they’re just coming to awareness on some of these chemicals and that bottle may be no protection whatsoever.

Pray that pasteurization is enough to make beer safe.

If we’re lucky wading shoes will never be the same

d3o_gel It’s one of those advances in science you know you’ll be wearing shortly, the real question lies in what fly tackle will sport it first.

A gel that when struck turns into a solid, and while snowboarders and other extremist sports are already looking at products, will it be the next great advance in rod science?

Vibration or shock causes the gel to stiffen, so when you initiate the double haul will your seven weight increase its resistance to give you that extra 20 feet of distance?

More importantly, if you slap the butt of the rod, can you impale the SOB that waded too close, rinse the blood off – then act innocent while they search for the murder weapon?

I can see advantages to practice rods, training the wielder to use less force and more timing, and outerwear is already available for cushioning the shock of a fall, but it’d sure be nice to trickle a little into the end of a hollow rod and not have it shatter when we sat on it.

Wading shoes have always been miserable at ankle protection, especially when our feet slip underwater. I can see an immediate application for a light weight shoe with a d3o barrier surrounding the upper foot and ankle area.

Considering it’s good enough to stop bullets, shouldn’t my new $1000 fly rod have this as an insurance policy?

Technorati Tags: , ,

Adding cream and sugar likely defeats the purpose

The Secret to Beautiful Skin! It was an obscene ritual we practiced while taking turns screening each other from the road. Fall River in August has a pretty decent evening grab – but to get to it you’d donate a quart of blood and scratch for days.

Gary Warren and I would take turns dropping trousers while frantically smearing our entire body with 100% DEET, then we’d spray each other with the aerosol version and make a dash through the grass for the river.

Generously slathered DEET fixed us and the mosquito problem, ensuring neither of us would reproduce – and leading to its removal from store shelves.

Heat and harsh sunlight was the other issue for us guides – me being the junior ensured I’d get a respite every three or four days, but the primary and secondary guides often endured two and three week stints of 100 degree weather and 14 hour days.

They always wore long sleeve shirts and broad brim hats – which despite the heat burden would assist in keeping the sun off tender flesh -avoiding burns and potential for skin cancer.

Most fabrics offer little protection from the sun and wearing both shirt and tee shirt is not much better.

Researchers are linking coffee (caffeine) with skin protection and have discovered how caffeine blocks mutant cells from becoming cancerous.

“But, Nghiem added, people shouldn’t increase the amount of coffee or tea they drink to prevent skin cancer. “You are talking a lot of cups for a lot of years for a relatively small effect,” he said. “But if you like it, it’s another reason to drink it.”

If the human trials prove convincing, we can all stop apologizing for slopping coffee down our shirt fronts – it’ll be essential gear akin to fly floatant on your dry fly.

It’s mostly “teeth floatant” at the moment, but while you’re running for the underbrush wishing you had zipper-front waders, cursing both bacon and eggs – you can be confident your skin looks radiant.

When reality is stranger than fiction

Fortified with Mayfly guts Can my sense of humor be masking a sixth sense? I conjure something out of the blue attempting to get a giggle, and the following week I find it on sale at the grocery store?

Spooky.

Many years ago fly fishing was turned on its ear when Jim Teeny patented his Teeny Nymph. This was pre-Internet so the steam and venom was limited to snail mail.

I can’t wait to see your reaction to the big ® blazed on the side of your next salmon, and while it’ll be easier than eyeballing whether a fin has been clipped, the bigger question is do you have to give it back?

… not release it, return the corpse to its rightful owner.

The tale starts with a genetically engineered hybrid of the Atlantic salmon paired with a Pacific Chinook salmon, gaining weight twice as fast as either species – yet doesn’t get any bigger.

“If a year-old unmodified salmon weighs 70 or 100 grams (1/4 pound), then a year-old (modified) salmon would weigh a kilogram (2.2 pounds) or slightly over,” he said, adding that the fully grown genetically modified fish doesn’t end up larger than the natural fish.”

They call it the AquaAdvantage® Advanced Hybrid, we’ll call it the “Double Chin.”

AquAdvantage Growth Chart

Figure you’re the same height in High School as today, any difference in weight suggests your “breadth” has increased. I’d say it’s the dawn of a new era in salmon fishing and flies.

Gone are the rare tropical plumage and feathers from endangered species, replaced with synthetics we’ll dip in Tempura batter.

We won’t have to worry about escapees – males never ask directions, they’ll simply mill endlessly at the mouth of the Panama Canal, while the females try to leap the lock gates.

The down side is they won’t expire like Pacific salmon, so this’ll be a yearly tourist spectacle complete with vendors selling bread slices for your kids to throw.

No wait, there’s more!

Trout are next.

Despite having to retrofit all the trucks with larger nozzles it’ll be every hatchery manager’s dream, docile 10″ fish that weigh 2 lbs. With that much bulk it won’t be able to swim upstream, it’ll drift with the current waiting for the Cheetos emergence.

It’s an elegant solution, plant them in the upper river and when they hit the brackish delta they’ll expire en masse, and if any make it to the pumps they can scent the lawns in the south end of the state.

Food and fertilizer in one flabby silver parcel.

Statistically Sage is a wart on the Shakespeare derriere

Despite the colorful nom de plume here’s what you look like; you own a Sage fly rod, you fish a Scientific Angler fly line, and you buy all your flies from Orvis.

Unfortunately for the $1000 rod crowd, the Shakespeare Ugly Stick retains the title of most purchased rod in the continental US, and is also the rod most purchased with a bundled outfit.

Southwick Associates the statistical think tank for angling and hunting released figures for last year’s responses from their AnglerSurvey.com site. Southwick is a marketing and statistical “for profit” organization that compiles market information for both hunting and fishing manufacturers – and occasionally releases free reports for our consumption.

Sage commands a tenth of the fly rod market, Scientific Anglers has nearly 25% of fly line sales, and Orvis is responsible for 10% of fly sales.

Individual reports are available for specific states, and the message is mixed – but trending downward, as are the nationwide statistics compiled by Fish and Game.

The greatest growth in licenses appears to be rural areas, with the urbane city types falling by the wayside.

For the Moldy Chum – Trout Underground Bikini War:

Your obsession with bikini based angling fantasy holds water, to wit:

Just shove them aside and claim your prize Statistics for California are unavailable, but Florida is a sunny state and a close approximation. There are 1,200,000 women in Florida between the ages of 18 and 29. Roughly 13% of the population bought licenses, of which the greatest single demographic (9%) was male retiree.

Figure 110,000 women in the proper age group are available to drape themselves in a bikini on a rock. You’ve repeatedly insisted that the “supermodel” variant is desirable; taut, lithesome, and abundant in all the appropriate areas. Assuming “Supermodel” is 10% of the available age group, there are 11000 women available to fulfill your angling fantasy.

There are 8000 lakes (greater than 10 acres) and 2300 miles of shoreline, and models have the opportunity to engage a bikini 2 out of 7 days, therefore, there’s 3143 supermodels available to lounge on rocks on a given weekend. This implies there’s a bikini clad lounging supermodel for roughly each three miles of shoreline.

Unfortunately, there’s five steroid fueled weightlifter boyfriends per mile – and those that aren’t dating senior retiree’s, will be mopping your face on granite should you unsheath your camera.

I couldn’t find statistics for lounging bikini clad supermodels that long to be courted by a sweaty fishermen old enough to be their dad, with a wet dog that insists on sitting in the front seat, whose idea of the perfect date included a chili dog with sweetened cabbage.

Any of you fellows want to put a number on that?

Bogart and Hagar might’ve been on to something

A 3,000,000 year old trout languishing undisturbed in a remote and semi-pristine environment?

… and while you’re thinking some alpine Montana or Alaska venue, and donning them Blueliner togs, think again.

The rare and endangered Bavispe Trout

This is Mexico’s finest, and since 2000 at least a half dozen unique trout species have been discovered and classified by biologists. A 44 page PDF on the history of trout and their dispersion throughout the Sierra Madre is available from the University of Texas, once armed with the details and common names other sites with additional details are readily found.

It’s a quick and interesting study, and the unique trait is pictured above – the red band on the lateral line of the fish is broken by black.

Like everything else, their watershed is diminishing quickly – and the more common Mexican Golden trout and imported McCloud River Rainbow trout are interbreeding with what small native stocks exist.

This ain’t Slaw Dog country, as anything dairy is liable to regurge uncontrollably, this is home to the temperature insensitive Brownline crowd, who don’t blanch when served real dog, corn tortillas, and peppers that makes your eyeballs bleed.

Two if by Sea, three if they attack from freshwater

Trained, angry, and potentially lethal With their backs against the wall due to pollution, and global warming, with estrogen laced runoff blurring sexual identity, and victims of a focused campaign of extermination, are fish forming an insurgency intent on terrestrial Jihad?

Reports from across the globe suggest unprecedented levels of tool use among fish, never chronicled in many hundreds of years of observation.

Dolphins in Australia have been observed using tools, and they seem to pass on their specialist knowledge to others. This is the first time cultural transmission has been confirmed in a marine mammal.

While the military is mum on details, recent documents disclosed under the Freedom of Information Act detail the escape of 36 trained “killer” dolphins during Hurricane Katrina, most were wearing uniforms, complete with lethal darts.

Are “killer dolphins” on the loose off the Mississippi coast? And are they a danger to divers and surfers? This is not the first time military-trained dolphins have escaped from their human masters. Up to 20 per cent of navy dolphins are said to escape each year.

A steady increase in trained cadre, a whale-based global communications system, and migratory regiments waiting to take the fight to fresh water. Have fish finally realized it’s us terrestrials that pollute their homes, altering mood and sexual orientation of their children, and the source of stupid triploid slaves who swim in netted enclosures waiting for their turn at the fillet knife?

Considering the ocean floor is littered with unexploded ordinance, is it only a matter of time before some Orca grabs a torpedo and detonates himself in the engine room of the Royal Caribbean?

Earth has nine terrestrial countries that possess nuclear weapons, and two species, fish have 92 known nuclear weapons in their arsenal, perhaps it’s time to dig a fallout shelter, as it’s only a matter of time before fission clouds envelope Asia – the source of so many Japanese seafood internment camps.

Salmon farmers suggest it’s Seals that rend nets and release brigades of recruits into the brine, possibly swelling the ranks of shock troops destined for our estuaries and freshwater impoundments. Quagga and Zebra mussels infiltrate our freshwater supply, while Rock Snot follows to exploit and train Asian Carp, and perhaps Goldfish.

Fishermen have insisted fish are growing smarter with every outing, and while skeptical non-anglers are asleep in their beds, it may only be our “thin green line” that’ll defend the interior.

Hell, with all the wealth of the oceans at their disposal, Sponge Bob could be sending subliminal messages emasculating our children; PETA and the “Sea Kitten” campaign was just the opening gambit in a global war of supremacy.

Can you put a face on the creator of “Catch and Release?”